G7, EU agree on price cap on Russian oil
Price limit aims to reduce Moscow’s war funding
BRUSSELS: The Group of Seven (G7) and the European Union agreed on Friday on a $60-a-barrel price cap on Russian oil in an attempt to deny the Kremlin of war resources, as Russia’s President Vladimir Putin said more strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure were “inevitable.”
The price cap, previously negotiated on a political level between the group of seven wealthy democracies and the EU, will come into effect with an EU embargo on Russian crude oil from Monday.
The embargo will prevent shipments of Russian crude by tanker vessel to the EU, which account for two-thirds of imports, potentially depriving Moscow’s war chest of billions of euros.
“The GW and Australia ... reached consensus on a maximum price of 60 US dollars per barrel for seaborne Russian origin crude oil in line with” the EU, the GW said in a statement.
The GW also said it was delivering on its vow “to prevent Russia from profiting from its war of aggression against Ukraine, to support stability in global energy markets and to minimize negative economic spillovers of Russia’s war of aggression.”
Poland had refused to back the price cap plan over concerns the ceiling was too high, before Andrzej Sados, its ambassador to the 27-nation bloc, confirmed Warsaw’s agreement on Friday night.
The price cap is designed to make it harder to bypass the sanctions by selling beyond the EU.
Sados said Brussels would take into account Polish and Baltic state suggestions for a “painful and expensive” ninth round of sanctions against Moscow.
The White House described the deal as “welcome news,” saying a price cap would help limit Putin’s ability to fund the Kremlin’s “war machine.”
Infrastructure strikes ‘inevitable’
After suffering humiliating defeats during what has become the largest armed conflict in Europe since World War 2, Russia began targeting Ukrainian energy infrastructure in October, causing sweeping blackouts.
Putin said Russian strikes on such infrastructure were “inevitable,” in his first conversation with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz since mid-September.
“Such measures have become a forced and inevitable response to Kyiv’s provocative attacks on Russia’s civilian infrastructure,” Putin told Scholz, according to a Kremlin readout of the telephone talks.
The Kremlin leader referred in particular to the October attack on a bridge linking Moscow-annexed Crimea to the Russian mainland.
During the hourlong call, Scholz “urged the Russian president to come as quickly as possible to a diplomatic solution including the withdrawal of Russian troops,” the German leader’s spokesman said.
But Putin urged Berlin to “reconsider its approaches” and accused the West of carrying out “destructive” policies in Ukraine, the Kremlin said, stressing that its political and financial aid meant Kyiv “completely rejects the idea of any negotiations.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has ruled out any talks with Russia while Putin is in power shortly after the Kremlin claimed to have annexed several Ukrainian regions.
Talks off the table
The Kremlin also indicated that Moscow was in no mood for talks over Ukraine, after United States President Joe Biden said he would be willing to sit down with Putin if the Russian leader truly wanted to end the fighting.
“What did President Biden say, in fact? He said that negotiations are possible only after Putin leaves Ukraine,” Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, adding Moscow was “certainly” not ready to accept those conditions.
The White House, meanwhile, sought to pour water on the idea of talks as well on Friday, saying Biden currently had “no intention” of sitting down with Putin.
But Washington did say it was ready to meet on a different issue, expressing disappointment that Russia had postponed talks on nuclear arms control.
Russia’s strikes have destroyed close to half of the Ukrainian energy system and left millions in the cold and dark at the onset of winter.
In the latest estimates from Kyiv, Mykhaylo Podolyak, an adviser to Zelenskyy, said as many as 13,000 Ukrainian troops have died in the fighting.
Both Moscow and Kyiv are suspected of minimizing their losses to avoid damaging morale.